This is one of things so annoying about Apple. There is no reason for this cable to be so freaking delicate.

I have recently acquired iMacs from 2010 and 2011. 2010 LVDS cable is solid, easy to deal with. 2011 version is like this Xserve cable. INCREDIBLY easy to bugger up. It has little metal clasps that mean you have to levitate the screen whilst feeding 2nd hand in to unclip release. If done while iMac standing will probably result in cable ripping the socket off logic board.

Ebay has several people offering fixes for some dollars.

No reason to change this connector, other 3 remained the same.

And. Apple wins. Me telling you this just furthers their goal. “It’s really hard to put in new drive, let’s head to The Grove, have a nice dinner at that Italian place and get a new iMac”

I found a dead 27” in the alley, SCREEN DMASHED, the AMD GPU seems fine. it was the HD THAT WAS IN FRITZVILLE. Some poor bastard chucked it out a window for a bad $30 part. Most likely because they read it was scary. Maflynn mod at MR encourages readers to cower in darkness and remain terrified of their 7 year old iMacs.

They won’t fix themselves folks, and they certainly aren’t worth paying a genius $800 to fix a $400 machine. Get out your Torx set.

Or chuck it out a window and drive to The Grove with a credit card. The ink ravioli is pretty good.

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Before asking a question, check your "Personal Settings" and be sure that you have "Brain Services" set to "On".

I was reading the thread(s) at MR about adding some missing Microcode and NVME to latest Mac Pro 5,1 boot room.

Someone had suggested adding the Westmere CPUs to the X-Serve 3,1 boot rom. It is basically a 2009 4,1 in many regards, down to having 1 or 2@ 2.26 Ghz 4 Cores as base.

I bought an X-Serve a couple years back to work on iMac MXM cards. I figured it was only Mac with MXM 3 A or B size card that could be swapped with 1 or 2 screws. I planned to bootcamp the X-Serve into Windows to flash, then back to OSX to test. X-Serve has a DP port wired through MXM card to back panel. And it used same crappy GT120 as an iMac.

Anyhow, I got the cheapest X-Serve I could get. It had apparently been in service on a submarine that sank. Water damage, things fixed with hammers, parts missing. I wanted cheap and I got it.

It's junk but it runs. Single 4 Core at a blistering 2.26 Ghz. I can watch my beard grow while it boots.

But the whole plan came to a grinding halt when I found out that Windows doesn't run natively on an X-Serve. And running in a VM doesn't let you touch the hardware the way I needed. (Flashing EEPROM on MXM card) Became a large, and potentially dangerous door stop.

I recently decided to finish this quest. So I got the cobwebs out of the X-Serve and fired it up.

Saw those Microcode threads and got excited. Decided I was going to have the first 6 Core X-Serve. Downloaded the various tools and modules.

Digging through the X-Serve boot rom I couldn't locate the 15 Microcode. So I used some thought and located the table that it contains. I would like to contribute the attached files, when used as h9828** thread at MR, it works. I swapped the Microcode on the X-Serve boot rom and was able to up the level from 25 to 28. So that worked.

But sadly, I could not get a W3690 to work. X-Serve is cursed with another similarity to 4,1. Even the single core X-Serve has a dreaded "lidless" CPU. At hand I had a W3690 and a W3520. I tried the 3690 several times, it just never lit the "blue lights of joy" when it attaches to EFI display and boot finally is visible. When I tried the W3520 it worked first boot. So, the Microcde doesn't bring magic all by itself.

Maybe I'll get a chisel out tomorrow and de-lid the Dxxxxxd 6-Core. But I did bend one pin in my ham handed efforts with 6 Core so I'll settle for my minor upgrade to 2.8 Ghz for now.

But hey, the Boot Rom thingie worked.

I'm going to try the NVME boot next. X-Serve never even got APFS so I may need help finding that and adding it.

Oh, and I installed Mojave. Runs just like on a 4,1/5,1. Smooth as butter as long as you don't need Finder.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: I was surprised to find that microcode didn't enable Westmere. But obviously this isn't defining piece of code. Otherwise, why do all 5,1s still work with 87 boot rom that lacks any and all Microcode? So by definition, the ability to run 6 Cores lies elsewhere in the rom. No new magic, but protection from bad guys should be important to any remaining X-Serves in Service.

I was reading the thread(s) at MR about adding some missing Microcode and NVME to latest Mac Pro 5,1 boot room.

Someone had suggested adding the Westmere CPUs to the X-Serve 3,1 boot rom. It is basically a 2009 4,1 in many regards, down to having 1 or 2@ 2.26 Ghz 4 Cores as base.

I bought an X-Serve a couple years back to work on iMac MXM cards. I figured it was only Mac with MXM 3 A or B size card that could be swapped with 1 or 2 screws. I planned to bootcamp the X-Serve into Windows to flash, then back to OSX to test. X-Serve has a DP port wired through MXM card to back panel. And it used same crappy GT120 as an iMac.

Anyhow, I got the cheapest X-Serve I could get. It had apparently been in service on a submarine that sank. Water damage, things fixed with hammers, parts missing. I wanted cheap and I got it.

It's junk but it runs. Single 4 Core at a blistering 2.26 Ghz. I can watch my beard grow while it boots.

But the whole plan came to a grinding halt when I found out that Windows doesn't run natively on an X-Serve. And running in a VM doesn't let you touch the hardware the way I needed. (Flashing EEPROM on MXM card) Became a large, and potentially dangerous door stop.

I recently decided to finish this quest. So I got the cobwebs out of the X-Serve and fired it up.

Saw those Microcode threads and got excited. Decided I was going to have the first 6 Core X-Serve. Downloaded the various tools and modules.

Digging through the X-Serve boot rom I couldn't locate the 15 Microcode. So I used some thought and located the table that it contains. I would like to contribute the attached files, when used as h9828** thread at MR, it works. I swapped the Microcode on the X-Serve boot rom and was able to up the level from 25 to 28. So that worked.

But sadly, I could not get a W3690 to work. X-Serve is cursed with another similarity to 4,1. Even the single core X-Serve has a dreaded "lidless" CPU. At hand I had a W3690 and a W3520. I tried the 3690 several times, it just never lit the "blue lights of joy" when it attaches to EFI display and boot finally is visible. When I tried the W3520 it worked first boot. So, the Microcde doesn't bring magic all by itself.

Maybe I'll get a chisel out tomorrow and de-lid the Dxxxxxd 6-Core. But I did bend one pin in my ham handed efforts with 6 Core so I'll settle for my minor upgrade to 2.8 Ghz for now.

But hey, the Boot Rom thingie worked.

I'm going to try the NVME boot next. X-Serve never even got APFS so I may need help finding that and adding it.

Oh, and I installed Mojave. Runs just like on a 4,1/5,1. Smooth as butter as long as you don't need Finder.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: I was surprised to find that microcode didn't enable Westmere. But obviously this isn't defining piece of code. Otherwise, why do all 5,1s still work with 87 boot rom that lacks any and all Microcode? So by definition, the ability to run 6 Cores lies elsewhere in the rom. No new magic, but protection from bad guys should be important to any remaining X-Serves in Service.

hi there !so .... sorry if I an a bit slow, but you are saying that we can flash a xserve 3.1 with a macpro 5.1 bootrom and make it recognize a pair of x5690 right?I’ ve got 2 xserve 3.1 and and an extra motherboard in a full maintenance kit.

@rominatorworst case scenario if I dont have the cable in the maintenance kit, I will look if I can pull it from the second xserve that I have and try to find a used xserve here in france I usually buy them complete dor 100$

Be careful, as I disc covered the hard way this cable can become "MARRIED" to the board, and only come out in pieces.

I was first getting 6 Core working in X-Serve, but you can be first with 12 Core. Not sure how fans will respond as mine were out of control anyway. And as pointed out, there is a chance you can then install Windows since 4,1/5,1 support it.

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Before asking a question, check your "Personal Settings" and be sure that you have "Brain Services" set to "On".

Be careful, as I disc covered the hard way this cable can become "MARRIED" to the board, and only come out in pieces.

I was first getting 6 Core working in X-Serve, but you can be first with 12 Core. Not sure how fans will respond as mine were out of control anyway. And as pointed out, there is a chance you can then install Windows since 4,1/5,1 support it.

Wow, I was trying to do this a couple of years back but never got very far. I have two working dual processor ‘09 Xserves, a working single CPU version, and a bunch of spares like another single CPU mobo, possibly a spare backplane and other bits and pieces (I did have several pulled 2.26 CPUs and at least one 5690 but I’ll have to see what’s still there when I get home, I’m on holiday for another ten days). I’ll happily donate any of my spare parts and would send the whole single CPU box too but postage from Australia is several hundred $$$ so I’ll just pull whatever bits are needed and mail them when I get home. Nice work guys!